Twenty-five days and 18 pounds later, Patsy Burnsed, 86, is still having trouble digesting the Oregon Department of Transportation's offer for her home.

It's not so much the frustration of ODOT paving over her home of 40 years for a massive traffic project, though that gets to her at times, too.

Most urgently, it's a practical question that has caused her to lose weight and spend most nights awake: Where are she and the seven family members who live with her going to live? With a reverse mortgage on her house, ODOT's $196,000 offer, plus relocation fees, will go straight to the lenders, leaving her homeless.

Burnsed was supposed to live rent-free until she died in the small house on Northwest Groveland Drive near Helvetia in rural Washington County. That was the plan.

Now, Burnsed, who is used to living rent-free, will have to find a way to pay rent somewhere, not to mention eat, on $740 a month.

"I just can't believe it, I don't know which way to turn," said Burnsed, sitting in a living room cluttered with the sort of family memorabilia one accumulates with six kids and a host of grandkids. "I try to go to sleep at night but I can't. It's all I think about."

Burnsed's situation has presented ODOT with unfamiliar territory and her family with an increasingly familiar nightmare. Even with up to six months of mandated relocation payments, ODOT's offer falls far short of what Burnsed owes on her reverse mortgage. According to an ODOT report, the county in 2011 set the assessed value of the home at $286,910.

A reverse mortgage allows title owners to make payments as they wish, with the lump sum being due only if the owner dies or moves out. Burnsed owes close to $260,000, she said. In addition, the owner is eligible to receive cash payments on the home's equity.

Two ODOT officials said there's no real precedent for handling reverse mortgages such as Burnsed's, at least in this region, and called it an "unusual situation."

Jill Gelineau, a Portland condemnation lawyer, used a stronger description: "It's an incredible injustice," she said.

Gelineau, who specializes in this sort of land-use issue, has offered free legal assistance to the Burnseds, who came to her distraught after receiving the mailed offer in October.

One of the difficulties for the Burnseds is the family can't afford its own appraiser. Without that information, the Burnseds have no ammunition for countering a fair market value offer for less than Burnsed's loan.

Once homeowners receive an ODOT offer they have 40 days to respond. If they do not respond, ODOT has the authority to file a condemnation suit and take the home.

The Burnseds are about two weeks away from potentially having the home condemned, though Gelineau said she intends to try to negotiate for money for the Burnseds before that period is up.

"I see a lot of particularly unfortunate situations," Gelineau said. "But Ms. Burnsed's really struck me. There is a lot of pretty significant hardship in her case."

ODOT officials who worked on the Burnsed property deferred most questions to spokesman Don Hamilton, who declined to comment on many questions because he said it is now a legal matter. Hamilton said he would characterize the situation as an "ongoing conversation" and that the agency is working to assist Burnsed.

"I don't think we've ever dealt with a similar situation," said David Kim, ODOT's regional manager. "But I know we'll work with her."

But the Burnseds have lost faith in ODOT's process, said Fred Burnsed, Patsy Burnsed's son.

That process started more than a year ago when ODOT, the city of Hillsboro and county land-use officials held a meeting for those property owners who would be affected by the Brookwood Parkway/Helvetia Road Interchange Project.

The $45 million project entails building on-ramps and off-ramps to U.S. 26 and modifying local roads to accommodate an influx of tech-related traffic, much of it stemming from Intel's Washington County expansion plans.

Burnsed's house is one of three on her street that will be paved over.

Though it's tough to tell from Burnsed's dimly lit living room and the spread of rolling Helvetia fields out her front window, Hillsboro's burgeoning tech corridor is visible from her gravel driveway.

So it wasn't necessarily a surprise to be at that ODOT meeting, Fred Burnsed said. And at an ensuing meeting between ODOT officials and the Burnseds, it seemed as if things might work out.

"They were throwing out all sort of comforting things, like saying maybe they could help her find a house where she could live for free," Fred Burnsed said. "It wasn't a promise, but it gave us hope."

Hamilton said he could not confirm whether such an offer had been made. But more than a year later, that hope has all but disappeared. Sitting in the family's living room, Patsy Burnsed, clad in a pink robe and slippers, watched quietly as her sons, Fred and Mike Burnsed, discussed her future. Several of Patsy Burnsed's children, including Mike Burnsed, currently live in the house with her.

They "fell on hard times," Patsy Burnsed said, and lost their jobs. But they had always had the house, or "homebase" as they call it, to rely on.

Patsy Burnsed moved into the house in 1972 with her husband, a Navy veteran.

She raised six kids there, drawn to the area because her mother lived nearby. She watched her children grow up, move away and some come back home. She named the Christmas trees in the yard after each of her grandchildren. She relished the moments when the ever-expanding family squeezed into her modest living room.

Her husband, Melvin, died in 1992 in an upstairs bedroom.

As with any long lived-in house, it contains enough memories to prompt a seemingly endless stream of stories.

But the focus these days has turned solely to figuring out Patsy Burnsed's future.

So far, Gelineau represents the family's best hope, they said. But what, if anything, will come out of negotiations, remains uncertain.

"At this point, what do we do?" Burnsed said. "We just need someplace to live." -- Katherine Driessen